Here's How Telling Kids They're Smart Can Screw Up Their Future Success

How you talk to your kids helps set their mindset —
with all sorts of consequences.themadlolscientist/flickr

"You're so
smart!" is a terrible thing to say to a child.

Here's
why.

While it seems
trivial, the way adults praise children shapes the way they view
themselves — with profound implications for their academic
achievement growing up and professional and personal success as
adults.

After finishing the test,
researchers gave students a single line of praise, either
"You must be smart at
this" or
"You must have worked really
hard."

Though it was only one
sentence, it made tons of difference.

As the experiment continued,
the kids were given a test designed for students two grades
higher than them, intentionally making them fail. Then they were
given another test designed for their education
level.

The result?

The kids that were praised for
their intelligence the first time around did 20%
worse on the test after they failed, while the kids that
were praised for their effort did 30% betterafter flunking the extra-hard
exam.

All because of how the grownups
talked to them.

"When we praise children for their intelligence," Dweck told New York Magazine, "we tell them
that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don't risk making
mistakes."

That's because, as subtle as it may sound, praising a kid's
smartness puts them into what she calls a fixed
mindset, while praising effort trains kids to having
a growth mindset.

A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character,
intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we
can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the
affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how
those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard;
striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a
way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled.

A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives
on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of un-intelligence
but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our
existing abilities.

Your mindset has profound outcomes, Dweck has written, since it's the "view you have of
yourself."

"In one world, effort is a bad thing," Dweck writes. "It,
like failure, means you're not smart or talented. If you were,
you wouldn't need effort. In the other world, effort is
what makes you smart or
talented."

The outcomes of having one mindset or other proved profound for people of all ages. Kids with
the fixed mindset were more likely to hide their errors in an
effort to look smart, while adults with a fixed mindset expected
their romantic partners to make them feel perfect rather than see
mistakes and work through problems together.

The takeaway: The next time your kid, colleague, or partner comes
home with a gold star, praise the effort they put in — otherwise
you're setting them up for all sorts of failure.